The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

Words are loaded pistols.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.